Probate DIY or employ a solicitor

[Proudwomantoday]

Mil passed away 2 weeks ago.
3 brothers are the executors. It's a good relationship between the 3.
They think the estate could be worth about £300k. (not including the trust)
No house to sell.
3 extra beneficiaries. One care home bill to pay.
Money is in isas, bonds, insurances, shares and cash. Plus a trust for the 7 grandchildren.
One is estranged but there has been contact with the childs mother

What does a solicitor do that the brothers can't.
Is it quicker through a solicitor.
What sort of cost does a solicitor charge.
They are not wanting to start or instruct about probate until after the funeral
which is the end of October.

Sorry to ask so many questions. All 3 have full time jobs but live in different areas of the country. They want what is the best thing to do.

I am currently staring the process of probate for my father who passed.

We are using a solicitor. Im the executor and dads estate is to be spoilt 50/50 with my brother, no family issues we are very close.

Dads estate, including house probably worth around £450-500k

We are using a firm of solicitors we have used before for various things and are very impressed with their work. They charge £2500 plus vat to deal with everything. Personally I didn't want to do it myself, its just something else to add to all the things I have to do following my dads death but I do believe you can do it daily easily yourself and save the solicitors fees, will still cost but not as much

It’s fine to DIY, especially between three of them I’d have thought. I’ve only had to do it twice as sole executor and did it in between work, dc etc, with houses to sell. It was a fair amount of work for the ones I did but it was intrisicallly linked with clearing the houses, going through all the old letters, financials, address books, notifying everyone, death certificates, utilities, old workplace pensions and all of that. I think the bulk of that stuff will fall to the executors even if you then pass the relevant paperwork on to the solicitors, you’ll still be the ones finding it and reading it to see if it’s relevant and so on.

I was very young when I administered my first estate and horrified at the very idea of spending thousands paying a solicitor to do it, I think they quoted over £2k

im sorry for your loss.

I’ve just used a solicitor for my father’s estate as it was over the IHT level and a farm, so more complicated. It cost about £2k. For my mum’s estate, which is simpler, I’d probably do it myself.

One thing though, probate was granted and then a month later HMRC came back and said they wanted to send an independent valuer to check things. And the solicitor is dealing with that for us too.

I just helped a friend to apply for probate. It was a simple estate to sort out, under the IHT limit, one property, one care home bill and a couple of bequests.

Solicitor who drew up the will quoted £8-£10K to deal with it! Another wanted to know the value of the house and guoted £5-6K.

They have saved thousands by doing it themselves.

You can apply for probate online, it took around 4-5 months to come through.

Agree it shouldn't be too difficult to DIY. I've done it twice. They will probably find that just gathering together all the paperwork to hand over to the solicitors is the most time consuming part. It can be tedious dealing with banks, insurance companies etc, but I doubt the process is any quicker or simplified if solicitors are involved. Depends on your tolerance levels when dealing with incompetent organisations like Capita whether it's worth paying someone to avoid the aggro.

As well as saving money it can also be quicker because they won't be waiting on the solicitors to get their a*ses in gear - THEY control the timing.

Current estimates for grant of probate are 16 weeks from date of submission. My neighbour is still waiting 7 months after his wife died, and his solicitor is the biggest reason for this delay.